Archive by date | February 2007

Making sense of science

I didn’t make it to the essay about Mendeleev that I mentioned earlier today… got sidetracked by an interesting comment piece by Professor Raymond Tallis in today’s Times about the public’s perception of science. It’s definitely worth a read and can be found here.  Read more

A bygone age

Have you ever considered how far chemistry has come in such a short space of time? As a News & Views editor, I get to look through the really old issues of Nature, searching for interesting snippets that can go into our ‘100 Years Ago’ section. It’s a real eye-opener to see how little we knew in 1907, and it sometimes makes me nostalgic for a more innocent age. So, I thought I might indulge myself (and hopefully you too) by picking out some choice chemistry from the February 21, 1907 issue of Nature.  Read more

Reactions – David Leigh

[Welcome to a new (and hopefully regular) feature on our little chemistry blog here. ‘Reactions’ will feature chemists answering questions ranging from why they entered the field to what reading material they would like to be stranded on an island with… – Stuart]  … Read more

Sparkly science

Catherine’s entry on toys (here) reminded me of clothing and accessories items I had seen earlier. Kyle at Chem Blog has been selling T-shirts, mugs, wall clocks or postal stamps – which are legal in the US and everything. I didn’t even know that was possible, but I just checked and found out that, in several (all?) countries, you can indeed customize stamps.  Read more

Time is on my side

I was just talking with Catherine, and we can’t remember if “a week in the library will save you a day in the lab” or if “a week in the lab will save you a day in the library”? I guess if you’re starting a new project, maybe it’s best to set up a whole bunch of experiments to see what works (steering clear of the dogma you’d find in published papers). But if you’re nearing the end of a total synthesis, you probably want to play it safe with your milligram/sub-milligram quantities of your natural product and spend a bit more time in the library trouble-shooting problems…  … Read more